[lamine-19]

scientific fact

[nawallovescommunity]

Darren Franich and Jef Castro imagine promo art inspired by classics

[nat-20s]

You can replace [ACTIVITY YOU ENJOY] with [SCROLLING] but watch out. This sucks bad 👍

[nat-20s]

Some things about this post since getting quite a few notes:

1. If you see this post, highly recommend taking it as an opportunity to set a timer for 15 minutes and switch over to ACTIVITY YOU ENJOY. if after those 15 minutes, you want to go back to scrolling, that's okay!

2. Huge shout out to this popping up in my notifs often, bc I do go back to activity.

3. I think there are times where scrolling is fine. Right now, for example, I'm being connected to a machine for two hours to donate plasma and platelets. Yes this is a brag but it is also a time where scrolling is one of the few things I can do. (Though I will probably also read or watch something on phone lol)

[wizard-council-bureaucrat]

hmmm, this seems to be some kind of curse breaking spell… be free ye reader

[robotslenderman]

The recent hot VS cold polls have made me realise that a lot of people have no idea how to cool down.

As someone from a hot country that's regularly on fire, here's some tips:

WATER IS YOUR FRIEND! WATER! IS! YOUR! FRIEND! You can transfer SO much heat into this bad boy! You cannot cool down without water!

Wrists under the cold tap. Splash your face and the back of your neck. Fan yourself.

In some countries you can buy a little handeld fan with a water sprayer.

Damp tea towel around the neck. Stick an ice pack in there on hotter days.

Half fill a water bottle with water, stick in freezer. If you use a bottle with a straw, make sure it's lying on its side with the straw side up and out of the water. When frozen top up the rest of the way with tap water and off you go.

Desperate to cool off? Wet T-shirt. Sit in front of a fan. This will nuke it, just don't get hypothermia and don't fall asleep like this.

Cold showers are also your friend in summer. Some people get psyched up by these. Personally, I sleep like a baby, so I'm good to have them before bed. Just keep in mind that it takes a bit of time for the cool to circulate, so your body will tell you that you're colder than you actually are. I find that when I have cold showers I need to step out of the spray when I think I'm cold... I'll just wait, and thirty seconds later the temperature has evened out and I actually need to step under again. Rinse and repeat until you maintain coolness even after stepping out for a bit.

If you can't do cold showers, turn the cold shower on anyway and just stick your arms under. When they're cold, lift your arms up above your head. The sensation of cool blood draining into your body is fucking weird and kinda unpleasant but less unpleasant than being hot.

Feet in a tub of water with ice. Blood naturally flows to your extremities when hot, so take advantage of this. If you don't have a tub of ice water, sticking a wet rag on your feet in front of the fan works too, it's the less powerful version of the wet T-shirt.

Drinks lots of water but make sure that water has electrolytes as well. Stay in the shade.

Keep air circulating. Fans don't actually cool rooms down, they just help transfer heat from your body to the moisture on your skin or the air via evaporative cooling.

Block north facing windows early in the morning so the sun doesn't get in. If you're in the northern hemisphere, this is opposite for you. Keep in mind that if your home is brick, the bricks will still heat up and slowly release heat into your home even after the sun goes down so this will only do so much.

If it's hotter inside than outside, close all your windows but two, making sure they're on opposite sides of the house/unit you're in. Point a fan out of one window, making sure that the doors between the rooms with the open windows are all open. This will help create a mini pressure system in your home, pulling cooler air in and pushing the hotter air out via the fan. Bonus points if you can get that fan high up where the hot air rises; even within a single room the top is much hotter than the air by the floor. Adjust the amount of open windows based on how many fans you have, but generally you want more windows with fans open than windows without fans to keep the pressure correct.

Obviously, use your common sense for these. Not everything WILL work for you, just use the stuff that does and adjust what needs to be adjusted. Some of these will be impossible to use in the workplace but others you can still use. Others are best used at home. If humidity impacts your ability to use any of these, get a dehumidifier if that's an option, or use more ice instead of evaporation.

Also keep in mind that the skinnier you are, the faster these will work. More fat means more insulation, means more heat, so you may need to be more patient with some of these or use them in combination.

[robotslenderman]

Bringing this back for my dying mutuals

[queer-riot-dragon]

I'm spending my days in an Mail Truck without AC and these tips are *legitimately* saving my life our there. If you can find cooling towels for workers they're the best thing ever. They activate with water and will keep you cool for hours with a breeze or fan. I wrap mine around my neck. Also! Long thin sleeves and long thin pants if you have to be outside in this. Counter intuitive I know but the sun kills and keeping it off your skin will keep you cooler (also use sunscreen for exposed skin if you're going to be outside).

[queer-riot-dragon]

UK friend just made this error so I'm sharing my tip here: cold towels go on your neck not your forehead.

Putting it on your forehead feels good but does little for cooling down your circulatory system.

Putting it on your neck helps cool a major artery that is going to your brain. There are two areas you want to make sure are temperature regulated to avoid heat stress and illness. Your brain and core. This helps severely with one of them.

[betterbemeta]

I lived in an old house with no AC for most of my adolescence and there are tips that I can add:

Understand your home and if its architectural features still function well. There is not much you can do if you live in an apartment/flat but a house may have features that can help or hinder keeping cool... and features that don't work anymore. For example, maybe you do live in a 'breezy' bungalow but the roof has been renovated and there's no longer a light-blocking overhang, or it's missing the ceramic roof it once had. Maybe your home is built to retain heat in the winter and previously relied on a tall fence or hedge to shade a north wall for summer which has since been since taken out. Not all of these can be addressed by quick fixes but it can still be helpful to understand-- including when your safety means leaving for the day because personal effort to cool the residence might be futile.

Stay on the first floor if you live in a multi-story house. Again, this may not be helpful for those who live in an apartment/flat. But you want to be as close to the ground as you can and away from rising heat. If you have access to a basement that is sunk into the ground, you may want to relocate there in extreme conditions.

Close your windows during the day if possible. ESPECIALLY if you live in an urban or highly developed area. You do not want the hot air from outside to get sucked into your relatively cool, shaded house interior. The effect is much worse if there is a lot of paving and especially asphalt around your house, which many normally-colder areas use for its flexibility and resistance to cracking in wintertime. That stuff absorbs 80-90 percent of sunlight and radiates it as heat. WAIT UNTIL AFTER SUNSET to open your windows, try to prioritize cross-airflow and if you have a second floor, do it up there. If you live in a flat and can't do cross airflow, this is a good time to use any box fans you can find to blow air out of the window as stated by robotslenderman above.

If bugs are a problem when you open your windows and you have no window screens, there is no shame in going to a hardware store for cheap screen (that is rated for mosquitos) and taping it up temporarily. If you use the 'open two windows' tip that may work very well because you'll only have to screen two windows. Climate change also means a change in the range of insects.

Some people have double layers of curtains and the 'conventional' wisdom is to put a decorative/sheer curtain on the outside and the blackout curtain on the inside, but reverse it for now. You want the sun to hit the blackout curtain and not enter your house, and if the blackout curtain gets hot the second layer of curtains might be able to create an insulating layer of air to prevent it from heating the room up. If your non-blackout curtains are too sheer to do this, there is also no shame in using a spare sheet, blanket, tarp, or even trash bags.

Go to the bathroom and pee. This sounds obvious given the advice to drink lots of water with electrolytes but there are a lot of urban myths about whether holding it or not holding it makes you cooler or warmer, etc. The actual cooling effects of eliminating waste are pretty negligible compared to having exposed skin and staying out of the sun, but you will be able to take in more cool liquid if you pee regularly.

[sexhaver]

lmfao the Scots in town for the World Cup have made a pilgrimage to Boston's world-famous Cop Annihilating Slide

[massachusetts-official]

Official Post of Massachusetts

[catchymemes]

blue sunset on Mars is a real phenomenon caused by the way Martian dust scatters sunlight.

Unlike Earth, where sunsets are red and orange due to the scattering of shorter blue wavelengths by our atmosphere, Mars has an extremely fine dust that scatters blue light more efficiently near the Sun.

So during sunset on Mars, the sky turns reddish-brown while the area around the Sun glows a soft blue. It’s the opposite of what we experience on Earth.

NASA’s rovers have captured this eerie sight

[kirbily]

Gif sets are SO important to me. Yes, please take this scene and break it up into 4 or 6 three second loops that I can study over and over to appreciate the small details of it

[herssian]

"there is no way you're not using chatgpt for at least a few things here and there no matter your stance on it" what the FUCK are you talking about

[allykatsart]

[lazarus-lazuli]

i’m totally normal about the “two aliens who survived their respective missions by pure chance work together and develop an emotional bond more powerful than the setbacks they face” movie ig. don’t need to talk about the soundtrack or anything. don’t need to talk about how eva, a character who could not make emotional connections with the people who she was sending off to die, singing them a song about grief. one that müller chose herself. or about how grace deciding to sacrifice his trip home and potentially his life to save rocky is set to the song two of us, which paul mccartney wrote about his own dearest friend, john lennon. they have to have paid a shitton of money to use it btw but they still chose that song specifically. i don’t need to scream about these song choices or anything ig. i’m feeling very normal about the Peace and Love in Space movie i assure you.

you and i have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

[savoy-truffler]

I just saw the movie and as a huge beatles fan the use of that song absolutely wrecked me. In ways that I'm still not sure I can properly articulate, except that I just keep thinking about how the let it be sessions were a hail mary themselves.

[important-cat-pics]

[hotcrossedfangs]

[jimmyhoffathecat]

Cryptid on film

[writeswrongs]

I was supposed to give a speech to over a thousand people today at a labor rally, but the rally was planned mostly around white union organizers who have not been to ICE recently or maybe ever. I say this because they planned this as follows: a Rally, with a march to ICE, followed by a second half of a Rally, the second half of which was to include my speech, which seemingly was the only speech to include a Salvadoran migrant speaker.

I was not originally invited to speak, but heard last minute that someone else had fallen ill and was giving up their slot, and begged white organizers through the grape vine to let me speak as a Salvadoran migrant and union steward who came to the US at age 7.

I have long been soured of going to so many rallies and felt alienated that they were allegedly for or about my people, but that no one had thought people /like/ me exist - we are still here! There are migrants in your work spaces and neighborhoods and organizations, we have stories and labor songs and speeches to share, we are marxists and labor organizers and have reasons to speak out too.

But seldom if ever do you hear our music or faces or voices near the banners. Instead of Tigres Del Norte we heard Bella Ciao, and none of the singers knew the Italian words or bothered to even translate them, so they sang nanananananana, instead of the powerful lyrics that maybe meant something once to someone somewhere. Instead of Somos Más Americanos we heard Don’t Worry, Be Happy.

Instead of a Salvadoran woman who wanted to speak to the American union workers about the Banana workers unions, we heard from a dozen white people about democracy, and justice, and the constitution, and no one was warned about what would happen if they marched down the street from the park to the ICE facility. They fully expected everyone to come back and complete the second half of the rally.

Instead, marchers with their dogs and children were tear-gassed to hell and back the second they dared get close to the facility, maybe at best 1/3rd of the marchers returned while the rest were bottlenecked towards ICE. There was little to no water to treat the untrained protestors. I returned to the rally quickly realizing I could not get caught up at ICE, knowing who I am and what awaits me.

When I got back a chorus of smiling white faces sang a silly song like a Christmas carol with their heads bobbling, reading the lyrics from some handed out papers. White people with upside down flags cheered. Then a black woman in overalls abruptly got on the mic and said “Well thank you everyone but we have to close the program early because people are getting tear-gassed, please get home to safety righty away,” - and I swore I couldn’t believe my ears.

They had brought us all here, marched all these people down to the ICE facility, and expected us all to march back without encountering teargas? And then when some people had made it back they had them sing a little jingle but turned the one migrant away? I begged them to let me speak for the three minutes I had allotted, noting that I had put myself in serious danger to come out here today. That I needed to be heard just this once, and that all the white people had their fair turn to say many unrelated things, and to sing many unrelated songs.

She said, “you don’t understand, there are children down here,” and I had to say “you don’t understand, there are children in the camps.”

And she tried again, “yes but the gas is spreading,” and I said “yes we have been down here being gassed for six months, don’t you understand?”

She blinked twice and told me they just had to break down. I watched from the sidelines as they continued to blare Caribbean Blue and smooth jazz while people filtered out, stood around talking, chatting - finally I said, “please let me speak, you still have speakers going, it’s been 20 minutes,” and the DJ, a white elderly man in a sweater vest who had a strict “only the classics” policy that seems to actually mean “no hip hop and no curse words,” - barked at me that he had to break down and to help him take down his canopy. I am no maid, so I did not listen. He then turned to my comrades and told them to take his canopy down, which they did not. Then turned to his two other labor organizers who were not paying attention, and they took a leg of the canopy and moved it somewhere without breaking it down.

And one looked at me and said quietly, “it’s okay, take that bullhorn no one will notice,” and we took it and ran.

And we ran to a firetruck which I climbed, and I gave the speech, which was in fact more than 3 minutes, sorry not sorry, to a crowd of workers who were slowly pouring out from the ice facility, some stopping, some going, some who heard me, some who didn’t. And I gave it there and it was the only speech most of these people will ever hear from a migrant in all of this, and I think that is tragic. But I firmly believe that had I not given it, had I not climbed the truck, had I not taken the mic, some people would have never heard this story at all. And I think very much you should hear it. And I hope you will share it, if you have the chance. And I hope I get to tell it again, someday, to people who actually listen, to the masses who came to actually support immigrants, and not just to the dredges after they’ve been gassed and are running for shelter while I’m coughing myself.

This is what I had to say.

[transcriptroopers]

Transcribed for accessibility + added links for context, but please still watch/listen to the speech if possible. A live speech really resonates. Begin transcription.

Olivia: I came to the United States when I was 7 years old. And I became a citizen when I was 20. But I am on this stage to ask: if you will give me 3 minutes of your time, *cough* I will give you 300 years of American History that has been taken from you.

There are five crops that changed the world as we know it. Bananas. Coffee. Tobacco. Sugar. And Cotton.

First grown by slaves in the New World, these crops all happened to also grow in a little bean-shaped country that my parents lived in near the Caribbean called Cuzcatlan, ‘The Land of Precious Things.’ It would be renamed El Salvador in the 1800’s. 

But the precious things remained after the name changed. And the people were captured, and they were forced to work for pennies on the dollar to dredge the precious things from the soil, and the sea, and the mountains, and the sand. Cuzcatlan was not precious just to us, you see. It was coveted by the Americans. And once they saw our jewels, they would never be satisfied again. 

The people suffered. And how we suffered! Dying in the fields, raped by their masters, buried in the shining black volcanic sands, their blood fertilizing the crops.

Of Bananas. Coffee. Sugar. Cotton. And Tobacco.

Until one day, the people of Cuzcatlan said, ‘We can bear it no more.’ And they broke their shovels in half, and they plunged the stems into their masters, and they rode through the streets on their masters’ Spanish horses, and they cried out that Cuzcatlan would no longer belong to the American companies that demanded their precious things without paying precious prices. Perhaps, soon, those business leaders would learn to negotiate for the labor and crops they so needed.

And the Americans? The Americans could not stand it! They would not abide such a story be told. And so you never heard it! The American companies, and all of their corporate masters came down on Cuzcatlan, with a fury seldom seen before. They killed everyone.

Instead, you heard a story about “Communists” and “Terrorists” in Central America, spreading a disease that would destroy your country and families. You heard a story that we have no good will towards you. That we wanted you to starve, that we were lazy, and formed gangs, and were lawless, and wore weapons to sell you drugs and fund terrorism. 

But you never heard the story of Cuzcatlan, because it was a sad story, and sad stories do not sell fruit, and coffee, and cigarettes!

No, they came to my country, and they wiped out entire villages. The Archbishop, Don Remar - er, Don Romero, himself, was shot by the military during his Sunday Mass, for having dared to wonder whether the workers deserved some mercy. Assassinated for having dared to wonder, and he was left bleeding on the pulpit, even as worshippers bowed their heads. 

EVERYBODY was KILLED. 

EVERYBODY! The women, with their children still in their arms. Anyone looking for cover; people who found cover, people who didn’t. People who worked, and people who had no jobs. Communists. Catholics. Those who didn’t know how to read, those who didn’t know what labor rights were. Simple folks. Smart folks. 

And they didn’t stop there. They went through the countryside, and they killed everyone they thought was hiding labor organizers or communists sympathizers. Banana union men and women, who they labeled terrorists. And in one village, we still only speak about in whispers, called “El Mozote.” The Americans tied women and children to trees, and they threw their babies in the air, and they shot them. Everyone was killed, to send one message, and that is: “A union is a threat to the American Empire. Not one union man or woman will hide in your village, or any other. And if you hid one here, now or ever, you will never breathe to hide one again."

And I tell you this because I am you from the future. You and I, all of you, are very much alike. You worked very hard to buy the precious things you have from the ground, the sky, the water, and the aether. You all wrote stories, you filed insurance policies, you taught children, you rung people up, you made sure whatever sorry system they had worked, not because you believed in it, not because you wanted it, but because it was all you could do. 

And in exchange, they offered you cheap bananas. Coffee. Sugar. Tobacco. Bananas.

But I will tell you a secret. They were never cheap. They were precious. And so are you. 

And they stole you, and they stole us, and they stole it all, and they told you: if you look the other way, you get to be satisfied and at least well-fed. But who can afford the luxuries of cigarettes or vapes or groceries anymore? Even that is being taken from you. And even if you have them, your food or your small pleasures won’t satisfy you. Not more than knowing the truth about Cuzcatlan, not more than knowing the truth about El Salvador. Today, where our precious land once stood, they built a concentration camp called CECOT. And not just for our precious things, our people, but yours. Your citizens, your dissenters, your unwanted disappeared into the hole that America built. 

And what will we do when they start building incinerators at the camps? What will you do when they open up mass graves? 

For our people, the most precious gift of all: do not take my warning lightly. The story of Cuzcatlan is not just from the past. It is from the future. The workers face the same enemy, and the enemy never had your interest in mind. From the moment they had you, the plan was to have a worker. From the moment you existed, it was to create another soldier against the people of Cuzcatlan and the rest of the world. You were a commodity to them. 

But we have written you a new future. One in which we no longer point guns at each other. One in which our billionaires fear the land of precious people from learning they are no longer precious things. 

Turn to me now! And tell me you will not forget the last three minutes. You will never again be ignorant of this story. And you will not let it happen here. You will close the camps. You will destroy ICE.

Spectator: Yeah! Olivia: You would rather have seasonal bananas or never see one again than have it covered in blood. 

Spectators: That’s right! Yeah! 

Olivia: You would rather trade fairly with other union workers than kill your fellow man, wouldn’t you? 

Spectators: Yes! Olivia: Tell me you love me, and that our fates are tied! Tell me you’ll stop them from dragging me down from this place, and I’ll never let them do to you what they did to us. I promise. El pueblo unido…

Spectator: JAMÀS SERÀ VENCIDO!

Olivia: Nunca será vencido. Amen.

End Transcription.

[writeswrongs]

It means a lot to me, that someone wrote down this speech for me, that I in the middle of the night wrote for as a love letter to the American labor movement.

I know I stuttered a bit, as I had just been gassed, as it took place not but 400 feet maybe from the Portland ICE facility.

One correction among many tiny ones:

“You worked very hard to /ply/ the precious things you have from the ground, the sky, the water, and the aether.” - And that work, it is very precious.

May the message make it to you all regardless.

[lamignonette]

[cheddar-baby]

i need to gush about how incredibly seamless her compositing is in these. Compositing is incredibly hard and time consuming work on a crisp clean digital image. But compositing into what seems to be a scanned photograph that was shot on film? Insane work. The film grain + photo paper texture is matched perfectly as well as the varying softness from being slightly out of focus in different amounts in each image. Each film stock has its own specific tone too some are warmer, others are more purply, or green and they all handle contrast with light and shadow completely differently. There was so much to take into account doing this and i really dont know how she did it other than maybe finding those locations again and shooting with the same film stock on a day with similar lighting. I cannot stress enough that for professional photographers doing complex compositing is mostly relegated to having a fully locked down camera set up in studio under controlled repeatable lighting. Super impressive and a really fantastic photo series truly.

[lamignonette]

[fairycosmos]

does anyone remember feeling well

[harrisonarchive]

On January 10, 1969, George quit The Beatles for a time.

“I’m really trying to draw everyone into the feeling of what it must have been like for him to start off at 27, renovating a house that took him the rest of his life, and at the same time, his band had broken up, he had Hare Krishnas living here, he was separating from his wife, his mother passed away during the making the record [All Things Must Pass] — it was a lot of really spiritual moments for my dad with this record. […] [Peter Jackson] basically made a reel for me with all of my dad’s footage and I could see if there was anything I didn’t want in, anything I thought was bad or not tasteful, and it was all just beautiful. He was very complimentary about my dad’s behavior in all of the reels. I got to see the moment when [George] played them ‘All Things Must Pass’ and they were kind of like, ‘meh.’ They’re playing along with it, but it’s a swing and a miss. It’s funny, I’m really glad that at some point people will be able to see that moment having heard the way that All Things Must Pass turned out. Even if you look at the diary entry we put in the book, it’s like, ‘Got up, left the Beatles, went and had lunch’ — it’s so nonchalant, but you know that he was kind of secretly brewing this ridiculous triple vinyl record in his head and he wasn’t going to let anything get in his way. Just like, ‘Okay, I’ve got to leave the Beatles now, because I’m not going to be able to do what I need to do.’” - Dhani Harrison, Esquire (August 2021) “You didn’t go home and sit in your garden and cry? ‘No, I went home and wrote “Wah Wah.” But then we got together to finish “Let It Be,” which was a film and an album of us rehearsing. Then somehow we did “Abbey Road” later, although it came out first. At least it was a nice album to exit on.’” - NME (1976)